Sarah's+LMF+Analysis

//Learning Motivation and Fun Analysis//


What are your 5 generalizations?

 * //1) Students of any age group participating in hands-on-learning throughout their experience will have "fun".//** Aurora and Daniel both shared experiences about taking dancing lessons as adults, and Lexie relayed her experience of learning to shoot arrows from a bow while in the 6th grade. All of these experiences involved watching the task to be learned and then trying it for themselves, whether in pairs or individually, and with the opportunity for fixing mistakes. Carl shared that while learning about the Russian culture, his "class went on for almost a year, all day everyday", requiring him and his classmates to speak only Russian. His experience was the best display of hands-on-learning in the 21 cases I reviewed. Also found in the 21 cases was 15 of them to be hands-on-learning, requiring participants to do some type of physical activity, to create a project, or to actively take part in a group discussion.


 * //2) For learners involved in a group size of 36 or more, the engagement aspect of learning is positively and similarly affected by the instructor's use of smaller groups.//** Most of the experiences relayed for groups of this magnitude involved "a lot" of peer interaction (15 out of 21). Jared shared that his experience was positive because he was grouped with people he'd never met before, and that "some of those relationships made in that team 4 years ago are still very strong today". Some participants where paired several different times throughout the learning experience, and others like Victor felt their engagement level was high with an appropriate stress level because he and his smaller group were simulating a real life situation while competing against other groups.


 * //3) The difficulty of content does not have to make the learning experience less "fun" for participants.//** Sometimes the "fun" can be taken out of learning when the content is extremely difficult. I see this all the time in my math classroom. But now, more than ever because of investigating these learning experiences, do I see that it doesn't have to be that way. In 17 out of 21 cases, the challenge level expressed by participants was medium to high. For instance, Leo said his gymnastics class his junior year of college "was notorious for having students fail, and then they would end up having to change their major". But, even with this said, he credited his instructor for making the learning experience "fun" regardless of how difficult the content was. Erica, participating in a 7th grade Biology project, recalled how much she disliked the topic because of it's difficulty, but that she still had fun with what she had to create. I will try to take these experiences as an encouragement to make math more fun!


 * //4) Formal settings for groups of 36 or more in these interviews offered a higher level of engagement than informal settings of the same group size.//** I decided to use this generalization to discuss "getting lost in the shuffle". It was amazing that groups of 50 or more offered participants a high level of engagement (12 out of 21). I've instructed as many as 46 for one high school math class, and it was EXTREMELY difficult to keep all students engaged for 54 minute spans of time. Interaction with others, I feel, is important as a way of keeping the participants' attention. Working together in a formal setting means that each participant is paid attention to more than if in an informal setting. I'd like to use volleyball as an example (something that just came to me as I was writing this analysis). Although considered informal to some, when a volleyball team of 15 girls is split into groups of 3, more learning occurs because each player has to be engaged at a higher level. Standing around decreases, and active participation/engagement increases. I've always struggled with using groupwork in the formal classroom setting, but I'm finding more and more evidence of it's success when implemented correctly.


 * //5) Age does not seem to affect the ability to have "fun" while learning.//** Out of the 21 interviews I'm using for this generalization, the ages of participants during the shared learning experiences range from 8 to 45. The oldest participants (2 out of 21 over the age of 45) had informal learning settings and still had fun. Mary Ann was able to visit Ellis Island where she could "walk in her ancestors' shoes", and Ed learned about hypnotism while sitting in the audience watching others participate. Holly at less than 10 years old, learned how to read music using "hot dogs, hamburgers, ketchup & mustard" in a formal/informal setting. And, Dan, just older than 10, learned to untie knots at boy scout camp. The settings varied, the content varied, and the ages of these participants varied, but the one thing they had in common was they had "FUN"!